Urban Ecoist

Like how I rhymed that…

I got an email from the Sierra Club today. Reading through it, I clicked on a link to a really scary report from the Environmental Integrity Project. Seems the Tennessee Valley Authority may not be all that truthful about the recent “leakage” at the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant in Alabama.

No!! A member of the Big Coal not being truthful. I can’t…nay, I won’t believe it.

The Environmental Integrity Project went through the TRI’s (Toxic Release Inventory) of both the Kingston Fossil Plant and the Widow’s Creek Fossil Plant. TRI are just what they sound like, an inventory of all toxic (by the Environmental Protection Agency standards) substance released over the course of a year and these reportings are required by law. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some industrial entities don’t lie about their releases. That is how companies end up paying fines, if and when the EPA starts enforcing rules.

The TRIs from the Widow’s Creek coal-fired power plant tell a very different story from what the TVA said the day the leak was discovered. The TVA claimed that the dump site that leaked was simply relatively safe gypsum.

This is not Widow's Creek, but looks like the same color green.

Now to be fair, that could be true. I am not privy to the exact location of the leaking waste pond. However, I did check out the location of the Widow’s Creek plant on Google Earth, and there are quite a few holding ponds. One of which is a sickly green color that is oozing into another different green pond. Incidentally, that green pond looks like it is close to what I think is Widow’s Creek, which is harder to find since it looks like it may have been manipulated by the Plant. What is worrisome is just how closely the ponds are situated in relation to not only Widow’s creek (which looks pretty small), but also the very large Tennessee River.

But truly, the most frightening thing to me — and maybe I’m not the only one here — is the large amounts of toxic releases that are allowable by the EPA. Truly staggering numbers of both air and water releases of things like arsenic, lead, mercury. There was over a billion tons of mercury emissions coming from Widow’s Creek in four years (1998-2002).

It is no longer acceptable to ignore the considerable amount of toxic substances that we spew onto the land and into the water and the air. Widow’s Creek is not unusual and there are many, many, many facilities around the United States pumping out similar numbers of compounds that are making us sick. Widow’s Creek supplies the electricity for 650,000 homes according to the TVA’s website. No matter where you live, you are consuming power that has to come from somewhere. Find out where, and find out how dirty it is and just how close it is to your home and your child’s school. Then maybe we will start looking beyond the empty promise of clean coal[sic].

At what cost progress? And we are only going to be needing more energy…

Widows Creek, Fossil Plant, fossil fuels, emissions, toxins, toxic substances, coal, energy, electricity, Tennessee Valley Authority, Tennessee, Alabama, Stevenson, Google earth, Kingston, clean coal, schools, homes, pollution